Tech

Irish company UXTraining.com have launched the UX Design Institute, which offers an online Professional Diploma in UX Design, accredited by Glasgow Caledonian University. The course is 40 hours in duration with a 2.5 hour exam, delivered online and includes mentoring and support. I have attended a UXTraining.com course in the past, and I found them and the material to be excellent and very worth while. The Professional Diploma in UX Design is currently available for 30% off as part of a special launch offer.

New Drone laws have/are coming into effect in the UK, that will restrict drones from flying higher than 400ft (120m) and within 1km of any airport. According to the UK government website, the laws are now in effect. According to dronesafe.uk, a CAA website, the laws don't coming into effect until July 30th.

New survey results from the Pew Research Center show that usage of Facebook by 13 to 17 year olds has dropped significantly in the last 3 years. Youtube, Snapchat and Instagram are where it's at, in case you wanted to know :-)

This week The BBC Radio 1 Academy came to Swansea. The Swansea Laptop Orchestra spent a day at The Adademy demonstrating and performing in The Swansea Grand Theatre.The photo above is of one of SwanLork's newly hacked musical interface controllers.You can view some more of my photos of the day here.

HTC announced a blockchain power smartphone called Exodus at the Consensus 2018 blockchain conference in New York City. The phone is believed to include a hardware wallet and support for cryptocurrency transactions and decentralised apps.

My friend James Leahy has created another language app, this time for German called Der die Das. The app helps you learn which German articles for nouns to use in the form of a quiz.The app will be released soon and is available for beta testing now.

Thoughtworks, the UK software consultancy company, have released the latest version of their Technology Radar. The radar lists items to Adopt, Access, Trial and Hold in your technology practice in the categories of techniques, tools, platforms and languages & frameworks. The lists are updated based on their experiences with their wide client base.

A public vote has launched to name the new Irish supercomputer that will join Fionn in the National High Performance Computing Service in Waterford in August. The system will have 13,440 CPUs and 64TB of RAM.The public are being asked to vote from a list of Irish scientists and the winner's name will be given to the new supercomputer. You can vote here until May 24.